THE government plans to hire about 10,000 health workers before the end of this financial year, to team up with the current workforce in order to strengthen health service delivery in the country, it was announced.
The Deputy Minister for Health,
Community Development, Gender, Elderly and Children, Dr Hamisi
Kigwangala, said this in Dar es Salaam during a ceremony to open the new
Aga Khan University (AKU) Nursing and Midwifery training facility.
Dr Kigwangalla said the country was
facing critical shortage of health workers whereas currently, the
shortage of such workers is at a tune of 51 per cent.
“Various measures have been put in place
to deal with the staff shortage, including increasing enrolment of
students in this sector, employing as many people as possible and that
is what we are going to do before the end of this fiscal year,” he
noted.
Tanzania with a population of over 40
million people, is in the midst of a critical human resource for health
crisis. In fact, the country can count on just 5.2 clinical health
workers per 10, 000 people and one fifth of the optimal ratio
recommended by the World Health Organisation (WHO).
Regarding AKU’s new nursing/midwifery
training facility, he said the opening of the facility was significant
for the development of the cadre in the country.
Expounding further, he said, nurses and
midwives were the backbone of the health sector as without them doctors
would not function effectively, it’s crucial to provide them with
necessary trainings to overcome challenges facing them.
The facility dubbed Salama House was
funded as part of a Euro 17.2 million grant to AKU from the Federal
Republic of Germany to improve health in East Africa through provision
of qualified nurses and midwives. The project used a total of Euro 1.2
million.
AKU Vice-President and Chief Financial
Officer, Mr Al-Karim Haji, said the grant would also be spent in
enabling more students to attend AKU and has assisted the university to
develop the curriculum for its planned post registered midwifery and
Bachelor of Science in Midwifery.
“Tanzania has only a fraction of the
highly skilled nurses and midwives it needs, more modern facilities for
nursing and midwifery education are needed,” he said.
Mr Haji said with the opening of the
school they hope they will change the situation as the opened school was
going to train more nurses and midwives and hopefully, the developed
partnership between AKU, the Federal Republic of Germany, the East
African Community (EAC) plus the support of the government of Tanzania,
would give more nurses and midwives an opportunity to improve their
clinical and leadership capacities.
German Federal Minister for Economic
Cooperation and Development, Dr Gred Muller, said despite all efforts
made in the country through the years, maternal and newborn mortality
was still at unacceptably level within the East African region.
Dr Muller said it was also crucial to
plan for exchange programme between Tanzania and Germany, as in their
country midwives expertise is there, but women have fewer babies
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